> would be *extremely* beneficial to have a standard query API for
executing
> XPath queries built into the DOM spec. It seems like a no-brainer.
As was pointed out in Dilbert, a no-brainer decision isn't always what you
want...
Yes, an XML querying capability is desirable, and in fact the Traversal
chapter of DOM Level 2 started out as including querying. But the editorial
team decided that attempting to design this API before the XML Query
Working Group defined the semantics of querying in XML really didn't make
much sense.
There's also a open question of whether querying really belongs in the DOM
per se -- or should be an API in its own right, which DOMs _and_ other
forms of XML storage could implement.
Known issue, on the list of things to be examined when we have time and
more information to work with.
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Joe Kesselman / IBM Research